Besides being a good hand to have in the field Jordan was always down
for some after work rock climbing which meant I always had a belay.
If you are unfamiliar with sport rock climbing a belay is when a
helper in the ground holds the end of the loose end of the rope and
takes up and dishes out slack as it is needed to keep the lead
climber from hitting the ground if he falls. That means that the
belay has to pay really good attention the whole time and be good at
their job or they could kill the guy on lead. So back to the
climbing. I liked climbing for the challenge and for the exercise and
the outdoorsy part but the real reason I liked rock climbing is that
it made me sound cool and dangerous to the ladies. To that end
whenever possible I would try to bring a lady or two along to see me
climb and hopefully be impressed by my cavalier disregard for my
personal safety. One day I made a tactical error though and on the
way home from work Jordan and I picked up a girl that liked him
instead of me. That had nothing to do with the sour grapes, it did
have something to do with that. The main thing though was when we
went climbing I had been working on my first 5.12 climb which was
very hard for me and had been the location of more then a few falls
in my quest to climb the old girl. TO that end I needed Jordan's
undeviating attention on me and the climb and it was instead on his
love interest and her flirty flirtations. When I was heading up I
told him to watch me closely as I was about to try a difficult spot
but when I went to make my move he was engaged in a little light
grabassery with his lady friend and as I went to make my move instead
of giving me slack he pulled me off of the rock causing me to fall
about thirty feet and right into a rage. I had fallen to within about
15 feet of the ground from about 45 feet up and I was screaming at
him to let me down so I could administer a little punitive beating on
his almost killing me's butt. He, for some reason, declined to give
me the slack necessary to allow me the desire of my screeching heart.
He told me I needed to calm down before he would let me down. The
girl was just really scared that I had fallen so far and the fact
that I obviously wanted to kill her man because of something she had
done. Like I have mentioned before I am not good at staying mad and
after the enraging chemicals had a moment to metabolize to levels
that my still forming frontal lobe could keep in check I calmly ask
Jordan to lower me to the ledge where I could hold on again which he
did and I resumed climbing up the route. I don't know exactly why but
I was able to climb the whole route from then on without stopping and
notch my first 5.12. So maybe his distracting flirtations were a
blessing in disguise.
